"I Am Always Remembering..."

This image miraculously stitched together a series of thoughts and memories that have been running through my mind of late. I remembered one of them on waking this morning and it was of an experience I had exactly 40 years ago.  How you might ask are the two things related...?  Well, every morning as I return to the land of consciousness, one of my first thoughts is what you see above. Sometimes I think if I could, if I dared, I'd write it across the sky.  And recently, I heard about a new film on the Boblo boats (you won't know what those are, but the beloved one knows), and as I listened to the radio interview of the filmmaker, I was transported back 40 years to an October day when I was away from home for school in Minneapolis. I was walking along a street in an old warehouse district and past a building just like this one and my mind was flooded with thoughts of happy moments in my childhood.

I recall that I was on my way to a florist supply house and I had just walked through an old timber framed railway viaduct, and as I did, I realized that the wet timbers had exactly the same scent as the wharf and the Boblo boats I knew so well from my childhood. And just then, as that familiar smell brought to mind happy rememberances of my youth, it also reminded me of one of the impossible dreams I had as a young closeted gay man, that someday I'd be on those boats with someone I loved. When I saw this image, it somehow brought all of these thoughts together in my mind. And my heart was reminded of how many times I wished the beloved one and I had met in our youth. 

Some years later, after I returned home from Minneapolis and after I began my career and what I now call the lonely years of fear and self-loathing, I remember Boblo had a theme song whose main line was "take someone you love to Boblo Island." I remember being powerfully affected by the television commercials featuring that song, so much so that eventually every time I saw one of them, I would change the channel because I knew it would remind me that there were no hopes for me to live that dream and to be happy and carefree with someone I loved on Boblo Island.

It's funny how the mind, its memories and your heart can work together to allow you to relive the things you should have forgotten long ago...

And now dear readers, as to the mystery of "Boblo," here are the clues to your answer. 

One of a series of television commercials from a season in the 1990s

And this the trailer for the film I heard about in the radio interview just last week

I am always remembering...